Words may well be meaningless by the time this oil spill event is over. It may be by Mother’s Day the first real clues of its impact on US will have been well documented. A friend on the Gulf Coast asked me for my real bottom line and I told him sell out and move.

Bill, Your comment reminds me of a phrase from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, “Words are but painted fire.” The real-deal may exceed our ability to paint. But I am pretty confident that whatever happens – especially if it is very bad – we will use words to debate its cause and implications. Those words, and any shared meaning that emerges from them, will end up defining the event as much as the event itself, at least for all of us not directly effected.